Guise of Adulthood

I’m whiling away the last wee days of my teens, and it’s odd. I know 20 is just a number, but it sounds confronting and like real adulthood, when really I know nothing will have changed – friends around me have already sashayed into their twenties without a hitch. I’ll still be silly and strange and myself; without the excuse of being a naive teenager. I suppose in general, the twenties mark a strange interim age – most of our life up until this point has been school and parents and living at home and maybe a little work and tertiary study. I don’t think I’ll feel fully adult until I can support myself financially, have my own place and a full time job (but oh dear that all sounds very mundane, and an ordinary life is one I’d like to resist…if at all possible?)

Since my last post I have examed, worked with adorable, sandy, chocolate mouthed tear-your-hair-out youngsters, danced to The Wiggles, and caught up with friends I haven’t seen for yonks. Oh yes, the summer is truly a joy and a half. Not to mention I have been savouring the abundance of strawberries and asparaguses that have come my way. My one envy is missing the community gardens raspberry harvests, but I might just get the tail end? I am happy and lucky and have many a thing to look forward to, and I am thankful that my life is filled with spectacular people and opportunities.

I’m sure people can relate to the teenage years being weird and confusing and difficult, while also hilarious and energy charged. The best and worst of times. Push and pull with parents, both wanting responsibility when it’s convenient and desirable, but not when it involves anything scary or hard or boring. Figuring yourself out. Having a lot of firsts. For me, it’s been a lot of learning – about myself, about others, about what the world is and what it isn’t, about not having expectations. On the whole, I think new years resolutions are great in theory, but difficult in practice. Old habits die hard…the number of times I’ve tried to commit to a consistent gym routine for example? Also, we shouldn’t have to wait to the beginning of a new year if we seriously want to make change in our lives. My resolutions are generally quite broad and because of that it can be hard to measure whether they have been achieved. I remember last year I wanted to improve at guitar, do more reading, and transition to veganism, among other things. I haven’t done too well on the reading per se but I hope to make up for this over the summer months.

Throwing my soul on a page is one thing. It’s potentially not always wise, but it’s something I do for myself first and foremost. It is really just a bonus if anyone ever benefits from the thoughts in my head that I choose to make public. One of the most amazing connections I feel we can have is one of mutual understanding, and guard-down, messy conversations about whatever with people that mean a lot to us. I never want to lose sight of the people and the experiences that I am grateful for, the things that matter to me, and the things worth placing value in. For me, 2017 on the whole has been fantastic, and I’ve welcomed a lot of change and growth and new people into my life. So shukran, kia ora, merci, danke… sometimes language falls short of the gratitude I want to convey? Spectacular. Mystical. Galvanising.